March 2008

It’s been 24 hours and some of the dust has settled. Given the fate of one of the world’s largest investment banks, I think the market held up very well. In fact, I would give Bernanke and Paulson a high five if I saw them in person for what they orchestrated this weekend. By cutting the discount rate on Sunday evening and offering a six-month lending facility to both commercial banks and ... read more

This morning on Money for Breakfast I talked with Lyle Gramley, a former Fed governor, and he had a lot to say about the Fed’s intervention in the financial markets. Gramley said the Fed has been acting very aggressively since the middle of January to help ease market turmoil. “I think it's pulled out all stops to prevent a meltdown; I don't think we should put the blame on the Fed for what ... read more

Last Monday morning on Money For Breakfast in our America's Biggest Business Rivals series, (which we air every Monday), we profiled Bear Stearns vs. Lehman Brothers. To say that the decision to pit them against one another was slightly controversial is an understatement! We contacted both Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers to make sure that we had all of the proper history on the each of the ... read more

Today is a sad day! JP Morgan, as expected, is acquiring Bear Stearns. This morning, many will argue about whether the Fed did the right thing by bailing out Bear Stearns. Thirty billion dollars is a high price to pay. Others will argue about what lead to Bear Stearns decline and who might be next. Some will suggest Jamie Dimon orchestrated a brilliant deal. What about the people? The ... read more

So I ran into the office first thing this morning and thought who won last night’s raffle? If you don’t remember the story, take a look at my last blog. It was about a home that was being raffled off in Washington County, Md., and the proceeds were being donated to the San Mar Children’s home. Get this: The county clerk won! His name is Dennis Weaver and he bought one ticket!! When ... read more

Try this one on for size! Imagine this you could purchase a home by buying a $100 lottery ticket! Sound too good to be true? Depends on how you look at it. Karen Crawford, a resident of Baltimore spent two years trying to sell her home with no success. Several months ago she read an article in a local newspaper about a farmer in Ohio who decided to raffle off his farm. She decided to approach ... read more

As promised in my last blog, here is a recap of what Northrop Grumman chairman & CEO Dr. Ron Sugar said about the US Air Force’s $35B contract with EADS/ Northrop and Boeing vice president of Tankers Programs, Mark McGraw’s response. Note the last question I asked both of them about the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) review and whether they would be open to Congress recommending ... read more

Good morning everyone! It’s just about 5:30 in the morning and, wow, I just read our rundown (list of guests appearing on our show) and this is a show that you don’t want to miss. We are talking to an author who wrote a book called “Testosterone, Inc: Tales of CEOs Gone Wild.” He is going to tell us about some of the biggest scandals in business and politics and how these scandals affect ... read more

A couple of hours after yesterday’s show, I received an email from the Premier of Saskatchewan. I interviewed Premier Brad Wall earlier yesterday morning on Money for Breakfast about the country’s natural resources, its reaction to the threat by the Democratic candidates to invoke the six-month termination clause on NAFTA if the deal is not renegotiated and why he was down in Washington, ... read more

After watching the wall-to-wall coverage of Governor Spitzer’s resignation today, I can’t help but think about the great irony of this moment. Here was a man at the top of his game. He made many enemies along the way, but he also did some real good. He was the people’s advocate, the individual investor’s advocate. He was thought to be a future presidential candidate. He seemed unstoppable ... read more